America's Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present

by Gilbert Chase

Completely rewritten, the updated third edition of American Music broadens the scope of the classic text. Gilbert Chase devotes greater attention to modern forms like jazz, folk, and popular music, while expanding existing scholarship. Chase's musical tour begins with the various religious movements that dominated our musical expression for over two centuries. From there, he explores the rapid changes and artistic flowerings of the twentieth century—a series of musical revolutions that saw the development of "serious" instrumental music and an influential avant-garde alongside the birth of ragtime, jazz, and a far-reaching constellation of popular forms. Written by the leading expert of his era, American Music is a long-standing classroom perennial and an indispensable guide to anyone interested in the United States and its musical heritage.

Genres: Music, History

744 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

Reviews

[Hadley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really excellent treatment of the subject; the polished and surprisingly humorous prose makes it feel considerably less long than its 600+ pages. I could have done with a little less discussion of 20th-century art music. Also, it was revised in 1987 from an original edition published in 1955, so its titular claims to cover the "present" aren't strictly true, and what discussion there is of post-50s recorded popular music is fairly cursory. (But that's not really why I picked up this volume anyway.)